A datacenter is a facility used to house a collection of computer servers and associated components, typically network hardware. The collection of computer servers is often called a “server cluster” or “server farm,” and is designed to accomplish server needs far beyond the capability of a single machine. The networking hardware typically includes network switches and/or routers which enable communication between the different parts of the server farm and the users of the server farm.
Server farms are commonly used for cluster computing, web services, remote data storage, web hosting and other web services. Server farms are increasingly being used by enterprises instead of, or in addition to, mainframe computers. As a result, it is a common expectation that a datacenter's computer resources be available, even in times of catastrophic events.
One issue within datacenters is that a circuit issue, such as a short circuit, for a single device in a datacenter can trigger open circuit protection devices throughout the datacenter. This situation is problematic in that the result is that some datacenter devices are cut from power unnecessarily and the source of the circuit issue can be hard to find, slowing the process of restoring power to devices. Moreover, often a datacenter device, such as a server, will change its state upon losing power, so the source of the circuit error is often hard to detect.